Have Homer, Will Travel

We’re super jazzed about a new (and free!) app called ToposText that pairs the entirety of ancient Greek and Roman texts with GIS mapping data, allowing travelers to pull up history’s classics in the places in which they were written. Developed by a relative of our own Lydia Kiesling, ToposText correlates to a map of nearly 6,000 ancient places and includes 570 ancient texts in English translation, with hyperlinks to the Greek or Latin original. And for a more modern context to the Homeric epic The Odyssey, consider our piece comparing its journey to that of Toni Morrison‘s own classic Beloved.

We've all been rejected; after all, we're writers. Yet sometimes it's nice to know someone has it worse than you. With that in mind, New Hampshire Public Radiopresents dramatic readings of famous rejection letters. Pair with: Our ask a writing teacher on rejection from various literary journals.

Although children's earliest memories often don't stay with them, as this new article on Aeondescribes, babies form emotional connections and intellectual attitudes that last the rest of their lives. So read to your newborn, according to Jason Boog (Born Reading), even if she doesn't yet know the words.

Although Of Mice and Men is an iconic novella about the Great Depression, could it be set in another era? At McSweeney's, Thomas Scottimagines Lennie and George in Silicon Valley. "Well, we’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens and a 7,000 square-foot Hacienda with a little landing pad on the top deck for a helicopter."

“Neither for the first nor last time in his life, Orwell was the brilliant loner who saw what others around him failed to notice.” Adam Hochschild writes on Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and his unique perspective on fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Vishwas Gaitonde takes us to Orwell’s first home in India.